


Vortical

by perihadion



Series: Shadowboxing [10]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: "dawn chorus" by thom yorke vibes, (if you could do it all again yeah without a second thought), F/M, Sexual Content, if i get old remind me of this: the night that we kissed and i really meant it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22441909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perihadion/pseuds/perihadion
Summary: The dust of Din and Cara's lives is kicked up into spiral patterns by his decision to show her his face as they begin to reckon with their new reality.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune & Greef Karga, Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: Shadowboxing [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1599208
Comments: 24
Kudos: 134





	Vortical

**Author's Note:**

> Do not comment with Omera hate.

It was a first for Cara to wake up with Din still beside her but she realised there was no need — or no use — for him to leave her at night now. In the dead of night the Child had cried out and Din had left to soothe him; she had turned her head to watch through the doorway to the adjoining room as he lifted the Child from his cradle and held him gently against his bare chest. She wondered if this paternal instinct came from somewhere deep inside him, if something primal remembered how he had been handled by his own parents when he was a baby. The Child had reached up to his face and cooed and Cara realised, as she had watched Din press his lips to the Child’s forehead, that this was nothing new for the two of them — that, in the confines of the Razor Crest, Din had shown the Child his face. That he had accepted the Child as his son.

Something inside her had expected him to dress and leave as he had many times in the past — her stomach had squeezed when instead, after rocking the Child back to sleep, he had returned to her bed and, pulling her into him, buried his face in her hair.

(He liked his face to be touched, liked to be able to breathe her in. It must be overwhelming for him, she thought, to have another human being so close to the skin which had been hidden for so long.)

The morning light streaked in, illuminating a few strands of hair and making him seem golden and unreal. It was rare to see him this relaxed, a faint smile playing about his lips. She wanted to reach out and touch him, to verify his realness, his solidity. Instead she looked him over, savouring the chance to commit every line, every scar, every birthmark to memory.

She remembered the first time they had fucked — when, after weeks of teasing and flirting on her part, he had pushed her up against the wall during a sparring session, adrenaline rushing through both their bodies, and things had tilted on their axis at last. She had stared defiantly into his visor and, cocking her head, reached down to unbuckle his trousers — and he had let her. They had fucked hard, almost viciously, against the wall, trousers shucked down but otherwise clothed. It had not been tender: just raw, and intense, and not talked about later.

She could not have predicted then what would come later. Even now it was impossible for her to chart the course they had taken to get to this place. Her feelings had bloomed so slowly in the dark that it was impossible for her to pinpoint the moment of germination.

She wondered if she would have made the same choice if she knew where it would lead them. Probably not. Neither would he. But, as she lay next to him, watching the rise and fall of his chest, she had no regrets.

As she took him in, he stirred a little and opened his eyes. When he saw her a warm smile broke across his face like the dawn. Everything he thought, everything he felt made itself known at once in the depths of his eyes and the quirk of his mouth. For all that he had learned to modulate his movement, his tone of voice, his language — this was one thing he had never had cause to hide. He had no choice in it.

It was disorienting for Cara whose default mode, after years of working with soldiers and mercenaries, was to work hard to decode the layers of meaning in someone’s face and voice — to recognise when someone stoic was scared, and when someone kind was cruel. Without his armour Din was entirely unguarded. It left her breathless.

“Morning,” she said, and reached out to touch him at last. He took her hand before it reached him and, closing his eyes, ran her fingertips over his mouth. Then he rolled them over so that she was on her back, hands pinned behind her head, and he was on top of her. His erection pressed into her thigh.

Well, if this was how it was going to go this morning, if they were going to avoid talking about it, she didn’t mind at all. She tilted her head with a smile. “Nice dream?” she asked, shifting under him in a way that made him shiver.

“Yes,” he said, kissing her hard.

*

When Cara had cleaned up she found that Din had also dressed and put his armour on. He was seated on her bed with the Child at his feet and his helmet in his hands, looking into the visor. She wondered what it meant to him now. He looked up and gave her a wry smile. “It’s strange,” he said, turning the helmet over in his hands before slipping it on. “It doesn’t feel like a lie.”

“You’re going out?” she asked, and he nodded.

“I am healed,” he said, “for the most part. I need to finish resupplying.”

She had known that he would be leaving again but it still hurt somehow. She looked at the Child, who was now sucking on his cloak. Din followed her gaze and sighed. “I am no closer to finding his kind,” he said. “I need to formulate a new approach.”

“You know he might be the only one,” Cara said. Din looked at her again. This was the thought which bubbled up in her mind from time to time — and her strange, perverse hope. She knew that Din must have thought about it too. “Nobody knows anything about him,” she said. “If his planet was destroyed —” like Alderaan. She trailed off.

Din leant over to pick up the Child, who smiled and raised his hands. “The galaxy is a big place,” he said, and something in his voice gave her the impression that he would not allow himself to hope that he could keep the Child.

*

Cara leant against the bar and gazed over the cantina. It was slow; few hunters had come in whether to return or pick up a puck and she was unable to shake the image of Din looking into his helmet. She wondered what he had been feeling in that moment, as he grappled with the idea of putting it on.

The decision was made and there was no changing it. There was no point in her even thinking about it — they weren’t her beliefs after all — but her brain still turned it over and over. He had no reason to fear she would tell anyone that she had seen his face, that anyone would discover that he had become _dar’manda_. But he knew, inside himself. She wondered how he felt about the situation: could he live with the tension of being perceived as a Mandalorian when — as far as he believed — he had lost his soul and his status as a child of Mandalore?

Then there was what he had said: it doesn’t feel like a lie. She wondered what was turning inside him, in the deep currents of him, what he was thinking, feeling — and where she figured into things.

She ... really had changed.

Greef slammed a hand down on the counter and she started. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “I prefer this to you breaking the legs of everyone who comes through here but I’d like you to make a little effort to look like you’re ready for action if things kick off.” He had a point.

“I’m bored,” she said, indicating the empty cantina. “Nothing is happening.”

“Well,” just a heads up, he said, “I’m expecting Mando in later to pick up a bounty puck.”

“Oh, he’s around?” she said, reaching for a bottle. She poured herself a drink and threw it back in one, aware that he was measuring her reaction. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Look, I can be around him without throwing down.” She smiled at Greef, who seemed unconvinced. “Professional, right?”

Greef took the bottle from her and found a glass for himself. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said, but he let the topic drop.

*

“I won’t ask you to come with me,” Din said. “Because I know that you can’t.”

She knew that he felt it too, this sense that things were changing all around them. Something had shifted when he removed his helmet: something in the universe, or something inside him — it was the same difference to her. Now they would spin out in unpredictable patterns, knocked out of their orbits like specks of cosmic dust spiralling, spiralling, spiralling. Maybe one day it would be time for them to come together and stay together but for now he was right: she couldn’t come. Not yet.

But she had been changed by this, it had left its mark on her; in some ways it had wounded her. Whatever she had been going to become _before_ was lost as irrevocably as he was. She had been perturbed from the usual pattern of herself; she knew that he had too. It bound them together so that even when he had shot across the galaxy without her a part of him would still remain. She remembered what the Armorer had told her about the death of a Mandalorian: that nothing of them remained, that they passed through the forge of stars and were remade. This Mandalorian had left something of himself behind: an impression of his face, which would stay with her for the rest of her life. Maybe that was why he couldn’t join the _manda_ : he was no longer whole, he was no longer himself, he had given a part of himself to her.

But what was it that he had said? It was worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [twitter](http://twitter.com/theoceanblooms) or [tumblr](http://spectroscopes.tumblr.com)! If you really liked this fic, it would be lovely if you could [reblog](https://www.tumblr.com/reblog/190504420329/khAR77b8) on tumblr.


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